Jerry Herman

Music and Lyrics

There is never an evening when, somewhere in the world, the music and lyrics of Jerry Herman are not being sung by a lady in a red headdress, or a lady with a bugle, or a middle-aged man in a wig and a boa.  Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage are home to some of the most popular, most-often performed and most successful musical heroines of all time, and have given Jerry the distinction of being the only composer-lyricist in history to have had three musicals that ran more than 1,500 consecutive performances on Broadway.  His first Broadway show was Milk and Honey (1961), followed by Hello, Dolly! (1964), Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), Mack & Mabel (1974), The Grand Tour (1979), La Cage (1983), Jerry’s Girls (1985) and “Mrs. Santa Claus” (1966), a CBS TV special starring Angela Lansbury.  Showtune, a revue of his life’s work, is performed in regional theatres across the country and around the world.  His string of awards and honors include, Tonys, Grammys, Drama Desk Awards, the Johnny Mercer Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, the Oscar Hammerstein Award, the Frederick Lowe Award, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Theater Hall of Fame.  Two of his classic songs are the emotional highlights of the hit Disney/Pixar film Wall-E.

HARVEY FIERSTEIN

Book

Harvey Fierstein is currently on a national tour starring as Tevye in the legendary musical Fiddler on the Roof. He first played this role for more than a year in the 2005 record-breaking Broadway revival. Fierstein made his professional acting debut at La Mama ETC in 1971 in Andy Warhol's only play, Pork. He followed that with appearances in more than 60 off off Broadway productions before he began his playwriting career. Early plays like Flatbush Tosca and Cobra Jewels led to his underground hit, Torch Song Trilogy, which transferred Off-Broadway in 1981 and then to Broadway in 1982 where it won the Best Play Tony Award as well as Drama Desk, Obie and Dramatist Guild awards. Fierstein also won Tony, Drama Desk and Theater World awards for his portrayal of the lead. Fierstein won his third Tony for the libretto of the musical La Cage aux Folles, currently being revived on Broadway. His other plays include Safe Sex, A Catered Affair and Legs Diamond. His television work includes "Nurse Jackie," "How I Met Your Mother," "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons". He was nominated for an Emmy for his work on the TV classic, "Cheers". Films include Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, Death to Smoochy and Bullets Over Broadway. His children's book, The Sissy Duckling, is published by Simon & Schuster and the HBO film version won him the Humanitas Prize. Fierstein's starring role as Edna in the musical Hairspray won him his fourth Tony Award as well as another Drama Desk Award, New York Magazine Award and the Drama League Award for Outstanding Performance of the Year. This made him only the second person in history to win Tonys in four different categories. Fierstein was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. Fierstein lives in a small fictional town in Connecticut where he is currently writing the books for two upcoming musicals and trying to get some sleep.

Terry Johnson

Director

Terry Johnson is a multi-award winning playwright and director and is Literary Associate at the Royal Court Theatre. He has been honored with nine major British Theatre awards, including two Olivier Awards and two Evening Standard Theatre Awards. In recent years, he has had 12 productions running in London's West End: La Cage aux Folles, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Rain Man, Whipping It Up, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hitchcock Blonde, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, The Graduate, Dead Funny, Hysteria, Elton John's Glasses and The Memory of Water. He has worked with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, directing John Malkovich in The Libertine (nominated for five Jeff Awards, including Best Production) and Lost Land, both plays by Stephen Jeffries. He has written and directed for international television, most recently "The Man Who Lost His Head" for ITV and "Not Only But Always" for Channel Four, which won five International Award nominations, Best Film at Banff, and a BAFTA for Rhys Ifans. He wrote and directed "‘Cor Blimey!" for ITV.

Lynne Page

Choreographer

Recently: Pet Shop Boys 2009 Pandemonium tour; Pet Shop Boys Lifetime Achievement performance at the Brit Awards 2009; and Kanye West 2009 festival tour.

Lynne Page’s theatre credits include: A Little Night Music (Garrick Theatre, Menier Chocolate Factory); Never So Good (National Theatre); Little Shop of Horrors (Menier Chocolate Factory, West End and 2009 UK tour); Bad Girls the Musical (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Assassins (Crucible, Sheffield); There Came a Gypsy Riding and The Late Henry Moss (Almeida); Fabulation (Tricycle Theatre); The Two Gentlemen of Verona (RSC); Bat Boy-the Musical (West End); Blonde Bombshells of 1943 (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Tell Me On A Sunday (West End); The Merchant of Venice (National Theatre); Meat (Theatre Royal Plymouth); Jesus Christ Superstar (European tour).

Television and film credits include: Hippie Hippie Shake (Working Title); Fred Claus (Warner Bros); “Phoo Acton,” “Billy Goat,” “Brazen Hussies,” “The History of Tom Jones“ (BBC); “The Last Detective” (ITV); “That’s So Graham Norton” (Channel Four).

As an Associate to Peter Darling, credits include: the movies of The Phantom of the Opera and Billy Elliot; Our House in the West End; Candide at the National Theatre; and Merrily We Roll Along at the Donmar Warehouse. Lynne has also worked extensively in music and commercials.

Tim Shortall

Designer

Tim has an extensive list of credits in London and the West End. His most recent designs are La Cage aux Folles at the Playhouse Theatre, Sweet Charity at the Menier Chocolate Factory – which transfers to the West End this spring, The Overwhelming directed by Max Stafford-Clarke at the Royal National Theatre and the Roundabout NYC, The Philanthropist directed by David Grindley with Simon Russell Beale at the Donmar Warehouse and Matthew Broderick at the Roundabout NYC, Awake and Sing with Stockard Channing directed by Michael Attenborough at the Almeida, See How They Run directed by Douglas Hodge, and for Terry Johnson – Rookery Nook at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Whipping It Up and Elton John's Glasses. Previous work includes Telstar, Body and Soul, Murder By Misadventure, The Cooks Tour, the costumes for The Big Knife, The King of Hearts for Max Stafford-Clarke, Excuses for David Grindley, Haunted, Twilight of the Golds, Eugene Onegin, What You Get And What You Expect, The Amen Corner, 900 Oneonta at the Old Vic and Disappeared at the Royal Court.

Tim has designed for most of the major regional theatres in the UK and highlights include – for Rupert Goold Privates On Parade, The Colonel Bird and Broken Glass, Single Spies and Having A Ball for David Grindley, and Roots (Barclays TMA Award nomination).

Designs for dance include Private City/Track and Field (Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet), Sonata In Time (Scottish Ballet) and Rhyme Nor Reason and Party Game (Norwegian National Ballet), The Nightingale (Dutch National Ballet) and Uncertain Steps (Introdans Holland and Ontario Ballet Theatre).

Television work includes "20th Century Blues: a tribute to Noel Coward with Robbie Williams and Elton John" (BBC) and "The Nightingale" (NOS Dutch TV) which was the Netherlands' entry in the Prix Italia and won the RAI Prize.

Matthew Wright

Costume Design

For the Chocolate Factory: La Cage aux Folles, Sweet Charity, They're Playing Our Song. Matthew trained at the Glasgow School of Art in Textile Design. On graduating he won the Royal Society of Arts Young Designer and two awards from the Japanese Fashion Foundation for design.

He was nominated for the TMA Best Design Award for his work on the Royal Shakespeare Company's Speaking Like Magpies (West End and Stratford-upon-Avon) and has designed the current national tour of Evita. Other recent designs include: Blackbird at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, Shadowlands, starring Charles Dance and Janie Dee (West End); and The Glass Menagerie starring Jessica Lange (West End).

Other theatre designs include: Nigel Planer's On the Ceiling (West End and Birmingham Rep); In Praise of Love (Chichester Festival Theatre); Alphabetical Order, What the Butler Saw, A Month in the Country (Salisbury Playhouse); Bezti, Katharine de Souza, Getting to the Foot of the Mountain, Swamp City (Birmingham Rep); One Under (Tricycle); Clouds (UK tour); The Dead Eye Boy, Us and Them (Hampstead); Bells, Chaos, Paper Thin (Kali Theatre); Deadeye (Soho Theatre); The Green Man (Plymouth/Bush Theatre); Presence, Royal Supreme, Blood Red Saffron Yellow, Musik, The Imposter (Plymouth); Arcadia (Northampton); The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Dancing at Lughnasa, Four Nights in Knaresborough, All That Trouble We Had (New Vic Stoke); Private Lives (Exeter); Romeo and Juliet (UK tour); Hamlet, Twelfth Night (Oxford Stage Company). His other work in opera includes: Il pomo d'oro (Batignano Opera Festival) and Don Pasquale (Scottish Opera Go Round); and he also designed costumes for Seriously Funny (Channel 4).

Nick Richings

Lighting Design

Nick's recent West End designs include: La Cage aux Folles, The Rocky Horror Show, Whistle Down the Wind at the Palace Theatre; A Man for All Seasons at the Theatre Royal Haymarket; Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the New London Theatre; Beautiful and Damned at the Lyric Shaftesbury Avenue; Icons in London at The Venue; Wait Until Dark, Garrick Theatre; Sleuth, Apollo Theatre; The Mystery of Charles Dickens at the Albery Theatre; Fallen Angels, Jesus My Boy, Apollo Theatre; Aspects of Love, What a Show, South Pacific, Prince of Wales Theatre; Fiddler on the Roof starring Topol, and Scrooge starring Tommy Steele both at the London Palladium; Derren Brown - Something Wicked This Way Comes (winner 2006 Olivier Award Best Entertainment) at the Cambridge Theatre. Nick was recently at the Royal Opera House with Monkey: Journey to the West, a new opera by Damon Albarn with designs by Jamie Hewlett, the co-creators of the virtual band Gorillaz. This was originally commissioned for the Manchester International Festival, and has already been seen in Manchester, Paris and America. Other international work includes: The Mystery of Charles Dickens, Broadway; US tours of Scrooge and Whistle Down the Wind, Grease, which toured extensively throughout Europe; High School Musical, The Producers, Beauty and the Beast, Show Boat, Copacabana, The Rocky Horror Show, and Chess in Copenhagen; and Rent and Gaslight at the English Theatre, Frankfurt. Nick's future projects include Great Expectations and Rock and Roll at the Library Theatre Manchester and a new arena version of Monkey at the O2; and I Do I Do in Vienna.

Richard Mawbey

Wig and Make-Up Design

Richard has enjoyed a great career in hair, make-up and wigs for over 30 years. London theatre credits include: Hairspray, Piaf, Zorro the Musical, Evita, Frost/Nixon, Guys and Dolls, Parade, The Producers, La Cage aux Folles, Starlight Express, Contact, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Kiss Me, Kate.

Nationwide productions include: White Christmas, The Wizard of Oz and the enormously successful Little Britain Live.

Opera includes: Die Soldaten for Ruhr Triennale in Dusseldorf and at the Met in New York; Così fan tutte in Aix-en-Provence; and Death in Venice at the ENO. In London he is the Managing Director of Wig Specialities Ltd, whose film credits include: Titanic, De-Lovely, Star Wars, Wilde, The Mask of Zorro, Roman Polanski's The Pianist, Disney's Santa Clause 1, 2 and 3, Being Julia with Annette Bening, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Walker with Woody Harrelson and Lauren Bacall, and Richard Harris as Dumbledore in Harry Potter.

Television work includes: all three series of Little Britain, HBO/BBC House of Saddam, The Catherine Tate Show, French and Saunders, Poirot, Oliver Twist and Larkrise to Candleford. Richard is honoured to be personal wig-maker to Sir Sean Connery and Dame Edna Everage, while working with many great stars such as Albert Finney, Kylie Minogue, Jessica Lange, Susan Sarandon, Dame Shirley Bassey and Madonna for her Hollywood video.

Current plans include: the Frost/Nixon USA national tour; The Wolfman, a new movie starring Sir Anthony Hopkins; Wuthering Heights for television; and the Donmar West End season at Wyndham's Theatre. Please visit www.wigspecialities.com.

Jason Carr

Musical Supervision/Orchestration

After winning the 1988 Vivian Ellis Prize, Jason was invited by Peter Hall to compose Born Again (a musical of Ionesco's Rhinoceros) at Chichester Festival Theatre starring Mandy Patinkin and José Ferrer. Jason was Associate Composer at Chichester 2003-5, writing music and lyrics for two new musicals, The Water Babies and Six Pictures of Lee Miller (nominated for the British Composer Awards 2006). Jason has composed incidental music for over 40 plays in the UK and on Broadway, including 17 productions for the late Steven Pimlott. The CD Listen Up! features 20 of his songs, starring singers Michael Ball, Maria Friedman and Philip Quast. Orchestration credits include: the Menier Chocolate Factory's Sunday in the Park With George (Drama Desk Award winner and Tony Award nomination), A Little Night Music and Maria Friedman Re-Arranged.